


I Do Love Your Sweet Little Lies

by Shinkei_Shinto



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:54:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15690420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinkei_Shinto/pseuds/Shinkei_Shinto
Summary: HEY So sometimes. I like to hurt my friends. With terrible overwatch headcanons, and little drabbles, that Cause Pain. Various blood & death descriptions, no major characters (that we don't already know about) die, these are short and probably not going to get lengthened,read 'em and WEEP!





	1. Earn Your Stripes

Hana Song was crying. This was to be expected, on the field of war, under the shadow of the great monstrous omnic that had crawled out of the sea, cradling a body to her chest. Her squad mate, taken out by stray fire from one of the swarms of cannon fodder that rose around the legs of their true enemy, the unluckiest shot in the world. Hana had followed them down from the sky, her MEKA smoking and screaming alarms as she pushed it through everything - following the black stain of her friend’s crashed suit.

She was so small, now, pieces of both of their MEKAs surrounding her, that the great monster wouldn’t take notice of her. The fight was far above her; dozens of pilots trying desperately to beat it back into the sea, but all of that sounded far away right now. Her whole world was the crumpled body of her friend, bleeding out in her arms, far past anything she could have done for them. Even her crying was quiet, still, tears streaking down her face without her notice, her arms barely shaking under the weight of the body.

None of this meant she was safe. The earth crawled with monsters, omnics threading over one another like a living flow of metal and flashing lights, the horrible noises they made never really leaving her ears. The laser sights that guided them swept across every exposed surface, seeking more humans to kill, gunfire echoing quickly after every movement. It was all they were good for, and she had spent every waking moment and every last breath fighting them alongside her squad, alongside her friends, alongside the person who was lying in her arms. In the end, they had won - she had failed - and now she was alone. The tears came harder, now, sobs almost moving her shoulders, and darkened the military-issued cockpit suit of her comrade, mirroring her own down to the squad insignia. It just made her cry harder.

She knew she couldn’t stay here. Somewhere in the back of her head, she could hear herself, yelling: get up. Get out. Get moving. The omnics were getting closer by the breath, the horrible clanking sound that accompanied every motion echoing in her ears as if through a tunnel. They would scream, soon, she knew, the pitch nearly deafening her when they swarmed over the edges of the crater their MEKA had made. It would be her last one - the bracelet on her wrist had cracked in the fall, the suit having barely held together long enough for her to reach the ground next to her friend. With it unresponsive, she no longer had any way to call for help, but frankly, she didn’t want to. Losing any of her squad mates had taken a toll, and they’d all fallen, one by one, in this battle - she couldn’t handle losing another one - the last one besides herself. It was losing friends, like losing _family_ , and even hearing them fall over comms couldn’t compare to watching her last friend bleed out in her arms. Compared to that, the impending death rattling in on every side was nothing; it barely concerned her. She managed another shuddering breath, clutching their body to hers, finally running out of sobs and tears all at once. The first omnic leading the charge crested the rise of the crater around them, some 20 meters away, and its laser sights trailed across the ground, over their feet, running up their legs, and finally settling on the body of her friend, just below her face.

Hana snapped. Jerking one arm free of the bloody mess, she raised it, shaking, towards the metal monster, jerking the trigger of her blaster until it clicked empty, over and over again. The omnic crumpled before her, sliding down into the crater with them, adding its own smoke to the hazy mess, and she dropped her arm again, feeling as empty as the blaster.

And then something rose in her again, unbidden. The sight of those red dots sliding across her friends’ body had sparked a fire in her chest, and the longer she sat there, the more it grew. She wasn’t doing anything; sitting on the ground, staring unaware down at the body of her friend, not seeing anything, just feeling a rage rise in her throat. Slowly, as she stared at nothing, she became aware of a blinking green light next to her hand. She had dropped her arm, the blaster clutched haphazardly in her hand, to the ground, nearly slipping from her fingers, and there next to it was her squad mate’s arm, and their - her _friend’s_ \- bracelet was still functional.

She dropped the blaster. With shaking hands, she tugged the bracelet from their wrist, limp and unresponsive, before pushing it over hers. Her hands were stained red, flashing brown every time the light clicked on, and she kept pushing the bracelet up her arm until it rested next to the one that belonged to her. Hers was still broken, shattered, and dark - she felt a kinship with the item, and more so felt the life of her squad in the light on her wrist. She watched it for a moment, the light blinking responsively, still unerringly aware of the hell coming for her on every side, before squaring her shoulders. She wasn’t dead yet, and she carried the memory of every friend, of her entire family, with her, with this tiny blinking light, bringing hope to the fire in her heart.

Hana Song stood. She took a moment to place the body of her last friend on the ground, gently, laying them to rest in the only way she could right now, and then jerked the back of her hand roughly across both cheeks. Sweeping away the last of her tears before they could dry on her face, she opened her eyes, ready to fight, facing the glare of a hundred pinpoint laser sights skittering across the ground towards her, like bugs. And like bugs, these omnics would splatter before her. She opened her mouth in a snarl, the words lost to the sound of the MEKA call, her opposite hand slammed onto the bracelets around her wrist.

 

-

 

She never expected to win. She had never expected to _survive_ , throwing herself into the battle against the great beast with wild abandon, riding the MEKA of her dead friend, screaming until her throat was too raw to make any further noise. She had never expected to watch her fury turn the tide of battle, to watch the monstrous omnic turn under her guns, to conquer the beast and be alive to see it sink back towards the see, burning and smoking until the water finally extinguished it, leaving oil and parts smeared across the surface like wounds. She never expected to be standing victorious, the dawn rising behind her.

It was a shockingly small amount of time before the cameras found her, swarming her in a less deadly, but no less intense manner than the omnics had, nearly giving her flashbacks. But this wasn’t the first time the media had taken to her, and she was thankful, because something took over. She started talking, like nothing was wrong, answering questions and fielding responses and making jokes, even, the smile that crossed her face faker than anything she’d ever felt in her life, but it made the reporters that accompanied the technology laugh, even though she felt like she was made of stone. She was standing on top of the MEKA, not hers - although she felt like it was now - talking, for long enough that her shaking legs overtook her, and forced her to sit. And yet, somehow, she found herself almost posed, resting back on one arm, her legs kicked over the front screen, her other hand on her hip. She spoke to people and cameras alike, whoever caught her attention, spreading the answers around.

None of this felt real. She wasn’t really present, her mind still wrapped in the impossible battle and victory that had come after, most of her soul still behind her on the battlefield, lying with her squad, in pieces. She didn’t really hear any of the answers that she gave, knowing - trusting - that she was answering anything properly, that she had done this enough times to skate by. She was only barely aware of the titles that were being pressed to her, things like “hero”, and “saviour”, things that she didn’t really feel belonged to her. A mistake, perhaps, but one she would solve later, when she wasn’t busy sitting on a beach surrounded by… no one. That hit her, at some point, the realization that there was no one else. She sat alone: no other pilots accompanied her, no other warriors came victorious from the fight. No one else had survived the final assault, no one else had flown down to the beach, and now she was alone, and terrified, but too exhausted to do anything about it. Autopilot had taken over, and the fear of facing this crowd on her own was jammed down somewhere with the fear that she should have felt going against a towering monster with no backup.

Eventually, the questions petered out, subjects exhausted and interest waning for the moment, as the day broke and the world breathed for the first time since the beast had emerged from the sea. Someone came to rush her away, too, which helped end the questions and interviews, ushering her into the back of something that had seats and windows and she didn’t notice much else. Probably someone from the military; she wasn’t able to pay much attention, she didn’t know where her superior officer was, or if they were even still alive after that battle, and without her personal call bracelet functioning, no one would even have known she was alive herself. At least, until the interviews hit, and her face was plastered across the entire world. She was the front of the victory; she was the poster child, probably literally at this point. The country - the world - would rally behind her, for her, with her, and her commanding officers would use that for everything it was worth. She was the winner, now, and that was a lonely pedestal to be on.

The quiet got to her, eventually - the inside of the plane, the vehicle, whatever it was, nearly empty but for herself and maybe a couple others murmuring softly, was peaceful. The contrast jerked her to awareness, and she found herself looking down at her hands in her lap and the two bracelets on her wrist and her pilot suit - stained pink with blood. She wondered, idly, why it hadn’t stained the rust red-brown that her hands had taken on, only her palms free from where she had worked the controls of the MEKA for endless hours. The garish color almost mocked the seriousness of its origin, and it had spread across both of her arms and she would bet her chest too, where she had cradled them to her. She started to wonder why she wasn’t crying, or shaking, sobbing, something - why she hadn’t started reacting to the misery that was waiting for her somewhere in her heart. She hadn’t even cried again, too empty and listless to summon the energy for tears, but somehow she managed to look up from her hands in her lap. Glassy-eyed, seeing nothing of the inside of the transport, realizing only belatedly that the others in the plane had tried to engage her more than once, she found her gaze traveling to the window on her left.

She realized suddenly, shock coursing through her body so roughly that it hurt, daggers jerking under her skin and making her twitch, that more than tears had dried on her face. The blood from her hands, from her friend, had been smeared across her cheeks, and then dried like tiger stripes, an asymmetrical pair on both sides of her face. They were scratched over her skin like some macabre mark of victory, like a medal she never wanted, never asked for, and yet rested on her face.

Her face. Every photo and every interview would have them front and center, showing them off like she had meant for them to be there. Somewhere in her chest her heart tightened, as she realized that she would now have to wear those marks forever - as in that instant, they had crystallized as part of the performance of the victor, the face of triumph. The lazy pose over the back of her MEKA accompanied by makeup that no one knew she had never meant to put there, that no one knew came from the dead that littered the battlefield.

Hana Song would never forget the squad that died with her.

 


	2. The Weight Of The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HI IM BACK TO HURT YOU MORE
> 
> Reinhardt doesn't know she's alive. What if Fareeha let it slip, what if she told him, what if he believed her?

Reinhardt did not reminisce often. At least, he tried not to, reliving the glory days into his alcohol, training his squire in the same ways that he once trained, answering her questions, visiting with old friends still somehow young, while his body creaked with age. It wasn’t so bad; he had been forced into retirement, sure, but it had been back in his home and the break had been good, for a while. But the grief caught up to him, as it always did, and he was thankful for Brigitte’s presence.

Of course, there were others. No one else had died when Overwatch had disbanded; they had lost three members throughout, and the arguments had pained him, but Angela, Winston, Lena - they were out there, across the world, doing what they did best. And he was home. He shook his head, reminding himself of the good that he had heard from previous members now established in the world, as well as others - Fareeha, the promising Hana Song, the youth of the world was mightily impressive. 

True, there were those - he looked off towards the mountains, which made even him feel small - who went about it in the wrong way, criminals really, though they termed themselves “vigilantes” - he’d like to hear what they called themselves if he ever got his hands on them. He preferred thinking about those who did well in the world, not those who used the world to accomplish their gains, even if those gains were often in line with his idea of honorable accomplishment.

Reinhardt made a noise of displeasure and heard the railing cracking under his hands, quickly removing them and wiping the splinters off on his pants. Thinking about this - about them, about the people who were still out there, still doing  _ something _ \- always got him worked up. He had kept his mind from wandering to its favourite memory, the one that usually had him drowning it in beer and friends, but that topic wasn’t far from his mind: her daughter was visiting him again, soon, for something or other, and he knew she would not be far from his thoughts when she did.

Ana. He had lost her first, and so the others had been easier, in a way, though no less striking, but no matter how much loss he felt, she was always, somehow, the freshest. The most painful. Nothing, not even time, eased his heart, and preventing himself from slipping into thinking about her was far more difficult than he would admit to anyone. 

Perhaps it was time to drown these sorrows in some blows, or beer, or both - depending on who was around. Reinhardt turned, away from the limitless nature that surrounded him out here, and back towards the town, the bar, the people. Warmth, laughter, light, distraction.

 

-

 

She’s laughing so hard he can see the tears in her eyes, one hand pounding on the table between them, the other alternately covering her mouth or wiping at her eyes as the laughter brings tears, and he’s grinning alongside her, only prevented from joining in by his storytelling. 

“And, the crazy thing is, he tried it - and your mother - your  _ mother _ -” he has to pause, the memory still so strong even all these years later, “she pulls out her gun - from where, I do but wish I knew - and points it at him, without looking up from her book, and she tells him, out loud, in the midst of all of this, ‘Children, behave. Either fuck him or kill him, but continue to argue and I will put the  _ both _ of you to bed.’” He roars with laughter, remembering the looks on their faces at the casually dropped swear from their commander, and Fareeha drops her head to the table, wheezing. 

“She sure is something, hey?” Reinhardt, still laughing, notices, but says nothing - he cannot blame her. “Just last week, she told me -” Fareeha stops dead, her voice choked in her throat, cracking instantly when she strangled the rest of the words that were about to emerge. Reinhardt does not speak, pretending not to notice, bringing the oversized beer mug to his face instead, giving her time to gather her composure. “I mean, of course, it was an old recording - some files I had found - it’s like hearing her again,” her attempt at mending the mistake is shaky, at best, but Reinhardt has been around for long enough that none of that fools him.

He lets it slide. As much as his entire life revolved around charging in and brutally smashing things with his hammer, the brunt of his work done with a bluntness that no one else could begin to muster, much less match, he was more than that. Tact was not unfamiliar to him, and so he waited, rather than jump Fareeha here and now, and paid attention.

For months, he waited, talking to her, the calls while she was out on mission, the conversations with Angela in the background, tallying up the little mistakes. She spoke of her rarely, but when she did, he listened intently, and noticed. It took long enough for her to be able to return to his country, to visit again, that he was certain. 

He suggested a hike, which was nothing out of the ordinary, and while Fareeha moaned at him for the first few kilometers, she found her second wind, and outpaced him soon enough. There was a resting spot maybe halfway through the trail, and he found her there, stretching, waiting on him.

“Fareeha, my friend, tell me something.” Reinhardt says, perhaps with some extra breath in the words, before sitting on one of the boulders that decorated the spot. His hands relaxed in his pockets, his shoulders bent inwards, breathing evening out as his stamina caught up with him. It wasn’t that intense of a hike, but he was somewhat out of practice at the moment, having not slept well the past week.

“Hmm?” She isn’t thinking, staring off into the scenery, a landscape so different from the endless sands that she is used to that the breathtaking mountains and forestry almost makes her cry. It’s like water to her parched throat, and she visits as much as she can, trying to take the cool air into her very soul. He can always tell when she’s thinking of this, of her home, of her mother. There’s a look in her eye, a set to her shoulders, a certain stance. While she’s more relaxed around an old friend and inspiration, she’s still a soldier, and she still carries herself with effort even here.

“Where is your mother?” He had thought of this phrasing for weeks now, wondering how to tell her, how to ask her, how to start this. And Fareeha stops cold, her relaxed stillness turning tense, her shoulders turning more square, her foot suspended in the air, the ratty sneaker having been scuffing on the ground just now, only the toe caught on a stone there. 

“Reinhardt,” she laughs, shakily, her entire being uncomfortable and unsure, her voice reflecting every conflicting emotion that she must be feeling in that moment, “what are you talking about? You know that she’s burie-”

“Fareeha.” The stoicism in his voice stops her lies dead in her mouth, turning them to ash. The stiffness in her shoulders turns to defeat, and she sighs heavily, squeezing her eyes shut. Her hands clench and unclench by her sides, and her breaths are shaky and uneven.

“You’re not supposed to know.” Reinhardt sighs at the words, no other motion escaping him, the stillness here a learned trait from long hours of poise in his other work. It’s a stark contrast to the motion and energy of his squire, whom he had managed to abandon for this hike, although Fareeha would normally make up for it - all but now, where her guilt and uncertainty had petrified her to near stillness.

“So am I right?” He rises, untangling one hand from a pocket as he does, making the distance between them seem small with a single stride. He reaches out and places the hand on her shoulder, immediately reminding himself of - her mother, the same habit extending itself to Fareeha, reminding him suddenly of the photo he so cherishes, which shows them all together, before everything went wrong. It strikes like a knife in his heart.

She takes a long time to say the word. It feels as though it’s longer than any other time he’s ever had to wait in his life, stretching the limits of his patience and beyond. His heart beat in his throat, reminding him of every moment before battle, of the stillness before he charged forward in front of his troops, of the terror and honor and excitement and fear. He does not see the forests or mountains covered in snow before the two of them. He does not see anything, really, waiting with such focus on the woman beside him that his breath catches in his throat. His hopes are so high he knows how badly it’ll hurt to have them dashed all over again, that he will grieve like he did before, for each one of them. Over and over again, he finds himself in this position, his faith in people and his hope in the world coming crashing down on top of him like a mountain not even he could lift. Every time he thinks he sees her frame in the airport, before the youth of the person inside of it reminds him of who it really is. Every time he hears her laugh from a crowd, and turns around on his heel like he’s going to find her there, only to see nothing of the woman he lost. Every time he wakes, in the middle of the night, and for one moment he has forgotten it all, and reaches out, his hand falling to the empty space next to him. His shoulders tremble, finally, under the pressure of his own expectations, the sadness rearing like a tidal wave far above him, threatening his whole being again, before Fareeha finally speaks, in a whisper:

“Yes.”

 

-

 

It doesn’t really hit him at first. They do not speak for the rest of the hike, and Brigitte inspires them with conversation and food and brightens their day and makes them forget. He accepts the information quietly, into his heart, in a state of non-feeling, in a state of dissociation, feeling like the first days after he heard that the omnics were coming for them. Her trip ends, he escorts her back to the airport with little conversation, with meaningless words, and when she takes his hands before she finally turns to go, he does not look at what she has placed between them. He turns, leaves, and returns home. To his work, to his life, to his friends and beer and light and warmth. He does not think about it. He does not think at all; going through life mechanically for a few days, performing all functions as if in a dream, no one catching on until suddenly he finds himself alone.

He is alone in his own home, in his own rooms, safely, staring at his walls. There’s a mug of something in one hand, like he was relaxing, sitting in the armchair which has succumbed to his form over long years of use, like it was any other day off after a long week of working. It’s dark outside, night having fallen, early thanks to the time of year, which means the windows are showing him only his own face - blank, unfeeling, unseeing. He wonders how long he has been sitting here, watching nothing, waiting, procrastinating.

With effort, he turns to look - really look - at the walls, at the life that he has lived, collected in photos, awards, things. There are many, here, things on the walls, parts of his life framed with expert effort, but there is one that he is looking for specifically, one photo in particular that he wants to see. When his eyes finally land on it, finding it in its place after all this time, just like always, his heart stops. 

Ana is perched on his left shoulder, her rifle laid back over her own, the uniform blues she was in for the ceremony complimenting his traditional armor - also for the ceremony - her hair loose down her back under the cap. She is smiling, grinning even, her face younger than Fareeha’s looks now, and her free hand is on his pauldron, supporting her weight. He knows - he remembers - that her fingers had found the slightest crack in his armor, so that she could rest them on his actual shoulder, where she had pressed them to him like a lifeline. For all her bravado, Ana did not take well to the spotlight, and he remembered her leaning on him, literally and figuratively, with a pressure in his chest.

She had hated it. She hated being in the ranks, the commendations, the ceremonies that she went through over and over. It had not always been that way, but over time, she wanted to do work, actual work, and not be the face of the organization for others to fawn over. That ceremony had been one of those, where she was bitter about being unable to lead command elsewhere, and the icy glare that made many a cadet shiver in their boots had not left her face all day. The first time she had smiled was when he lifted her up to his shoulder, and the motion unsettled her iron footing, and she laughed, and the spell was broken. Around her, like waves, the people relaxed, her person a beacon to everyone - in command over headset ordering soldiers, or not, she was a leader that they all followed. 

He couldn’t see the photo anymore, his eyes shut hard, much more remembering it now. So much that he could still feel the pressure on his shoulder after all this time, so much that he reached up to wrap his free hand around the shoulder as if to grasp hers and then somehow that was too much - that was enough - he crumpled.

The sobs come on suddenly, wracking his body in the same way that they had after he had heard the news, the words from Commander Morrison’s mouth falling like bombs, experiencing her death all over again. For that day, that week, that month, that year, for longer; he knew the feeling, the sounds, the grief. He knew it wouldn’t stop until it had run its course, and left him on its own, he knew it wouldn’t end until he had remembered every moment, every touch, every soft word - until the flood finally ceased.

Every memory - the first time he saw Ana. The first time she reached out to him after a rough mission. Of the days where she got hurt, where she came back bloodied, where she came back with so much weight on her shoulders that he never wondered if she would be able to carry his armor - he knew. The way that her gaze, her voice, the soft names she awarded him, the way that she could lift him from the deepest of depressions after even the worst of missions. 

It flooded through him like an ocean, back and before and to the very last moments, the words he heard as she left the airship for the last time, played back again and again. When it finally waned, he was left empty again - but different this time. Cleaner, washed through, exhausted. That same numbness was there, but lighter, like a cloud that rested around him instead of a fog he couldn’t push through. He had managed to stand, at some point in these long hours in the dark, and he looked down at his hand, the mug held loosely, somehow still claimed there instead of resting spilled on the floor. He set it onto the counter, his right hand finally dropping from the shoulder that had held her. 

He knew, if he were to look, that his handprint would be pressed into his skin there, his fingers tight around the muscle. He knew that the impression would be red and fleeting, and missing the slender hand he mourned beneath it.

He didn’t look.

 

Reinhardt found himself before his bed, somehow, the distance between there and the chair missing from his memory, standing at the foot of it and thinking of nothing again. He was staring, unfocused, at the blanket crumpled at the foot of the bed, left there in haste and with a lack of care.

She never would have stood for it. Ana did not tolerate his mess; she had followed him about and taken up every thoughtlessly discarded item, more often than not lobbing whatever it was at his head with an accuracy that still amazed him. She was constantly tidying, straightening, cleaning the world around her as if it was on marching orders, while he left a trail of destruction as wide as his shoulders. He was still surprised that he had never picked the habit up from her, feeling the blanket with one hand, finding himself sitting. He hadn’t decided to, he didn’t remember the action, but his fingers twisted in the fabric as he thought of her. He thought of her coming into his quarters in the base, straightening the blankets over and over again, almost like a game. She knew he wouldn’t leave it well enough alone, and yet he found her fixing it anyways, her hands unable to be still, and so he let her - until he ruined the entire attempt, every time.

He wasn’t one for technology. His home was oddly lacking in the stuff, so intrinsic to the lives of so many nowadays, because he didn’t need it and he functioned just fine without it. But Fareeha had handed it to him, had pressed it between his hands before she left the country for who knows how many months. He had taken it, too, trusting her, trusting it, and then he had left it on his bedside table. But it had been days.

The note that had accompanied it had come with instructions - telling him that this wouldn’t expire, that it was safe to use. That it was encrypted by a friend, that he could trust the message he was able to send - just one - and that it wouldn’t endanger anyone.

He regarded it as one would regard a snake. It was out of even his lengthy reach; he would have to move across the entire bed to touch it, to activate it. He’d have to turn it on and hold it and type, to start, to send anything. To send anything to her.

The thought consumed him again, the idea of hope sparking in his chest like a fire he just couldn’t finish putting out, but then the space between his hand and that little black piece of tech was missing, and it was there. Just there, resting in his hand, too small for him, built for someone else - or by someone else. On the palm of the same hand that had just left the temporary impression on his shoulder - the kind of temporary that he had thought Ana was. She had been a breath of light into his life, a fire burning through his chest and lifting him to heights he missed stil. They both had, somehow, brought peace and care and love even, to one another, in the midst of a crisis, in the middle of the most difficult parts of their lives, and he valued that. But he had always known. The both of them had, they had known one another too well to think differently - that one of them would be extinguished long before their time. They each worried for one another every time they stepped off the ship, pausing together before one of them parted to breathe. To wait, to listen, her head pressed to his and her hands somehow thefting their way to his bare skin, finding every chink in his armor - the metal he bore or the facade he wore - while his gauntleted hands framed her body like another set of official blues. They always knew that one of them would go, would leave the other behind, that their light was temporary.

Yet as he stared down at the little black device, he found himself pressing a thumb into it, that unending hope trying so hard to exist in his chest, full of black nothingness. He was a mile away, and yet he found the screen lighting up anyways, a simple chat blinking waiting for him. He had one chance - the note had said - one message, one single moment to identify himself and to reach out to the person on the other side of this device. He had just this instant to see if the person that was there - if she - if her daughter really had -

His fingers moved so slowly across the keyboard he thought he’d never come to the end of the single word he’d chosen to type. His thumb hovered over the arrow at the bottom of the screen for minutes, for long breaths and rapid heartbeats, and then longer. Until the lit screen dulled, quieting under inactivity, and he pressed down by reflex - to activate it, to keep thinking about it - and realized it had been sent. Somehow, he felt like he had failed, like he had sent the wrong thing to the wrong person - like he was hoping for something impossible - like she was gone all over again.

"Liebling." 

 

In the end, he tucked his chin to his chest, the tears fleeing from him without so much as a shiver or a sob, quiet sadness overtaking him as the minutes turned longer, as time passed, as nothing happened. The world was rolling underneath him again, his footing uncertain, his hope having paralyzed him and the lack of it yet more so. His heart was crumbling under the weight of the world without her, under the idea that he must once again bear this earth without her voice, her laugh, her eyes. He drew in one more shuddering breath, and then noticed that the light from the device had changed while he was not looking. 

“Ah, Reinhardt, my love. I am so sorry I have made you wait for so long.”

Seeing her was like seeing a ghost. Like a lie come to life on the screen. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, the fear and relief and distrust boiling in his chest, nothing winning out, and all of it choking the words in his throat before he had a chance to form them. The little black thing was alive; with video, with a screen that threw itself above the item and hovered, encryption skittering across the bottom, something that he understood but did not recognize.The sun rose behind her, in a window that he didn’t quite process, looking at her again: her hair like the snow that she so loved from this place, her face marked with the heaviness of the world that she had taken on her own two shoulders, one of her eyes covered. She looked aged, she looked like he would imagine she would, were he to have let himself imagine her in any other way since her passing, she looked like a decade had come and gone and left her tired and hardy. Like he must look, to her, the years fleeing past him without his real notice, taking their toll without ever involving his choice in the transaction.

She said nothing more, watching his face for some kind of reaction, the two of them like cats. They were both like this; they were both waiting on the other to speak, to move, to acknowledge what had come to pass between them when Reinhardt reached out to her with the single word that he knew would identify him and bring rushing back all the memories of all the times he had murmured that to her. And yet, watching him, she gave in - the stubborn Ana he had known would never have done such a thing, would have waited him out for hours, her pride and her honor not allowing her to give in for anything, but that Ana was dead. That Ana would not have left him for a decade, left him like this, sure only that she was gone - that Ana would not have lied to him like this, for so long, would not have abandoned him to bear the world alone -

“Ah, am I that old, that my knight in shining armor does not recognize me anymore? Have I aged so?” She seemed so sad, and yet she smiled softly as she said the words. The phrase, the silly thing, was something she had passed between them as well, a joke taken too far for too long till they both almost believed it - she was never a princess to be rescued, but he was in fact a knight in armor - and her gaze shifted down to her lap, out of frame, her shoulders slipping down as well. In guilt, in sadness, in something - he knew she would feel all this, he knew she would - Ana would - the Ana he knew - would apologize and justify her actions a thousand thousand times, would explain and stand firm and joke, eventually, but this Ana - this Ana, aged by the world, bearing all of this on her own, this Ana just smiled sadly and waited for his response.

“No-” his voice broke, and he had to pause before he could muster the words to continue: “Ana, you are as beautiful as ever.


End file.
